X-Men Red #5 - "The Hour of Uranos"

[laughing_tree]

I don't want to do any tie-ins where we just plug into the larger narrative -- if we're tying into that entirely hypothetical event with an "X" right slap bang in the middle of it, that tie-in is going to change things significantly, not just for us but for the entire X-line. It needs to be a seismic event that cannot possibly be skipped or ignored and hits at the very heart of everything. -- Al Ewing

Comments

[blues32]

What am I looking at here? It would appear to me that Magneto had his heart torn out or, at the very least, exposed for everyone to see. And now he's using his powers to keep it going? I wasn't aware he had a metal heart.

[cainofdreaming]

Xavier: "I always..."
Magneto: "Stop."
Xavier: "... knew that..."
Magneto: "I mean it."
Xavier: "... you had..."
Magneto: "Groan."
Xavier: "... a heart of gold."
Magneto: "I'll just go and pilot Arakko into the sun now."

[numeronone]

There's a lot of iron in blood. A lot.

[blues32]

Yeah, but how much is in the heart itself? Like, the things connected to the veins and arteries? He's got to make it beat, doesn't he?

[donnblake]

I dunno, maybe he could just circulate the blood manually?

[dan_ingram]

That's going to make naps complicated

[donnblake]

Well, yeah, but we're coming in on "The hour of Magneto," not "The cozy retired lifestyle of Magneto." Short term solutions.

[scorntx]

If we were talking long term solutions, it'd be useful if there was some Mutant with some sort of fantastic ability to, say, regrow an entire person's heart after it had been torn out.


But knowing Elixir, he's probably been squashed by an aardvark so he can't be of any help.
As is always the way.

[icon_uk]

Those lousy aardvarks, you just can't trust them!

[blues32]

I don't think he can move blood, just the iron in it.

[icon_uk]

As it's not iron filings in people's blood, but the protein ferritin, I'm not sure there's that much of a difference.

[mastermahan]

I will allow Magneto to use his powers to circulate his blood on the grounds that it is badass.

[icon_uk]

Indeed, the "Rule of Cool" applies

[goattoucher]

:notes this in The Book:

It is Written.

[gnarll]

He has done so on a number of occasions before, while concentrating on other things. When Proteus turned the iron in his blood to lead, when inhibiting blood flow to the parts of the X mens brain that controlled their powers. Hes also considered it as an attack as part of narration.

[dan_ingram]

So...just wondering, how do you pronounce Uranos' new name?

[numeronone]

See, before the movie I always thought Thanos was pronounced "FEY-noss".

But here I think it's "YEW-rah-nose" rathe than "You-RAY-noss"

[super_fly]

While giggling in the manner of Beavis & Butthead.

[dr_archeville]

I go with "ER-uh-nohs"

[gnarll]

Ewing's normally very good. But sometimes he seems to have these huge misses, where things just don't work. This issue was just peculiar. Despite a detailed precog warning the "warrior culture" of Arakko is totally unprepared for attack. The "omegas only" rulers of the place go down easy. Everyone stands around while Uranos jobs Legion. Conga line fights, everyone waiting their turn to fight one on one. The one attempt to work together involves someone vomiting up metal for Magneto to throw. Which is all Magneto does, he doesn't even remember his own shields!!

Overall, everyone jobs so hard to Uranos that it becomes a Not Brand Ecchs style parody.

[numeronone]

In all fairness, the Legion fight took >30 seconds.

[laughing_tree]

They had like less than a single minute’s warning of the Eternals’ attack. Legion’s fight with Uranos lasted even less than that. And you can’t raise shields when it’s taking all your will and concentration to barely keeping the bad guy restrained.

[gnarll]

Magnetos shields have never taken concentration to raise before, and he seems to be standing around waiting for a bus while Legion fights Uranos.

[giraffesforever]

For me, this was the first clunker in this series. Blame the event I suppose, but even the minor storytelling beats I thought were off. For example:

If you introduce someone as "he may be the most powerful being to exist", you probably shouldn't have him lose off-panel in 30-something seconds. And if you do have the bad guy beat him like that, you probably shouldn't follow it up with the bad guy needing more than six minutes to overcome being wrapped in metal by much lesser powers.

On a separate note, every time the mutants have an overwhelming opponent (Orchis space station, Nimrod, the Hex, Uranos), all I can think is that everyone on the island has forgotten that they have an unlimited supply of Proteii and Jamies Braddock who can snap their fingers and alter reality at their whim. It would ruin the drama, I know, but I can't help but think it.

[nyadnar17]

Its a totally fair concern in such a massive crossover event with stakes this high.

Like if a nuke is going to blow up Gotham in a Batman book I have no problems pretending Flash doesn't exist/is offworld/is dealing with his own nuke. But if the nuke is going to blow up Gotham in a massive DC crossover event then yeah, take the time to explain to me why Flash doesn't just handle it.

[giraffesforever]

I'm thinking of it as a necessary blind spot. There could be no perils if Proteus or Jamie was snapping there fingers at all the problems. However flimsy the excuse, that hand has to stay tied behind their back if there is to be a story.

[bruinsfan]

I'm skeptical about the descriptor for Legion. He's extremely powerful and has a dizzying array of different mutant abilities at his disposal, but how easy is it for him to access them simultaneously or in quick succession? How good is he at figuring out which is best to use when faced with an opponent that he doesn't vastly overpower? Uranos is being built up as Thanos before there was a Thanos, basically.

That said, an entire room full of omega level mutants ought to be able to fight more effectively than each taking a shot at him one-by-one. Over in Legion of X the Arraki mutants have been able to team up to compel gods to appear and then destroy them. I'd think similar tactics should work against Uranos, at least temporarily until he can be resurrected.

[mindsweeper]

Legion has some major feats, like Magik using him to wipe out a bunch of elder gods or reality warping. I don’t know Uranos other than from this and he seems like a boring generic powerhouse.

I’m doubtful Uranos beat Legion in a traditional rumbles sense. But I assume it’ll be shown in Legion of X and we’ll all know what went down then.

[laughing_tree]

The thing is, being an Omega doesn't necessarily make you super-powerful, just the best possible at something, and even then only potentially. Iceman's an Omega, but it took him years to unlock his potential. And if you're the Omega at, I dunno, super-senses, that's still not much use in a fight.

[jgraygaming]

Nice to see they created an entire second mutant nation and set them up on Mars just so they could slaughter the vast majority of them. It must be Tuesday in mutant-ville.

[scorntx]

Over twenty years on, and the jokes of Mutant Summer Beach Party remain topical.
And easily applicable to this issue.


In the spirit of fairness, it's Gillen's event and Ewing's just doing the tie-in. If the main event says Uranos kills everyone effortlessly, then that's what the story's got to go with.
(At least the narration is not trying to tell us Uri is big and awesome and impressive like some relatives of his that could be named, but that he is just a big blue berk.)

[iamrman]

Hurm. I wonder which relative you could possibly be referring to.

[scorntx]

Starfox, obvs.

[iamrman]

Of course. How silly of me.

[super_fly]

"You have 1 hour to seduce the entire population of Arakko."

[super_fly]

To put it another way: "You come at the king, you best not miss."